


Moth's Wings

by amberwing



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberwing/pseuds/amberwing
Summary: The Reader does not participate in the Rites; there is no raiment for her.





	Moth's Wings

The Reader does not participate in the Rites; there is no raiment for her. She stands beyond the drawn lines in the earth of this, the first Rite of hopefully many, with the Book in her hand. It balances precariously upon her open palm and the breeze does not stir the pages, even as the Reader’s rags flicker around her ankles.

The Nightwings have moved too quickly to find their Reader anything better, and she refused Hedwyn’s offer of his spare set of clothes. “I will not take your things from you,” she had said, hand pressing the bundle back into his. “You have given me enough.”

Hedwyn had relented only when Jodariel looked at him, her eyes a smoldering of disgust against the darkened pits of her skull. The Reader wears the scraps the Nightwings found her in: tatters of some former life struggling to hold her bones together.

She is tall, starved-thin, and has only one arm. The left has been severed above the elbow in some accident prior to banishment, and in the unspoken way of the Downside, they do not ask. Rukey called her vulture-bait while she slept that first night, as the Nightwings whispered together under the clatter of blackwagon wheels and imp calls. “Tatterdemalion,” he’d also said, plucking the word from his mouth like a bad tooth. “A pile of talking dust and garbage. We’re screwed.”

Standing in the pyres’ lights—blue-and-gold and gold-and-brown—she does not look like garbage. Her stained, frayed cloak spreads behind her like patchwork harp’s wings. Her face is a burning mask of wonder and starlight.

She speaks the words of the Rite in time with the Accusers’ Reader, two distant figures whose voices rise and fill the air with thunder: a crescendo of language none save they can understand, and Rukey says, very quietly, “Wow.”

_Wow_ , the Reader agrees inside of them, and the Nightwings become a braid—a tapestry of thought, of movement. They are the Reader; the Reader is them. There is no telling the difference between the weight of Jodariel’s hooves against the earth and the ache of the Reader’s long-missing arm, the excited whip of Rukey’s tail and the sweat on Hedwyn’s brow.

Jodariel catches the orb in her left hand and the Reader’s surprise is a burst of cymbals, a crackle of lightning. The shift of air through Rukey’s whiskers calls Hedwyn back from the molten gold shriek of Lendel’s aura. The burn of the pyre engulfing them rips the breath from their throats in shared awe.

They move, they move, _they move_ —until the golden fire flickers out. There is only starlight and a blue pyre behind the Nightwings, standing, breathing, listening to the drum of one another’s racing heartbeats.

“ _It is done_ ,” the Readers intone, and the Nightwings understand the words now—not the sounds, old and lost, but the meaning their Reader draws from it. These are words that hold thought, direction, and then—

They are released.

Their aches are their own. They do not feel their Reader fall to her knees, her voice gasping. Jodariel does not bid Lendel good fortune; she only turns and goes to her Reader, helping her to stand. Jodariel’s hand engulfs the Reader’s own, hot still from the touch of the celestial orb.

“We are victorious,” Jodariel says, and there is a hint of surprise in her voice. The Reader accepts the Book from Hedwyn, still letting Jodariel steady her. Rukey twines around Hedwyn’s feet in a cur’s dance of joy.

“Did you see that!” he howls and cackles. “Did you see how I grabbed the orb right out of Lendel’s hands and then Hedwyn caught the pass and—”

“I did,” the Reader says. Her fingers tighten around the spine of the Book and press it to her chest, as if she fears dropping it again. “I was there.”

“You were! You were _there_! Tatters, that was something else! Can I call you Tatters? Tatters, chum, you’re going to get us free!”

“Rukey,” Hedwyn says. “Please.”

Rukey leans against Hedwyn’s shins in brief chagrin, but bounces off again without apology. His joyous barks echo against the hills; his silhouette leaps and capers against the starlight in wild abandon.

“He does not mean any harm,” Hedwyn says. “You saved all of us at least once back there.”

The Reader has stepped away, but there is a strange, faraway look on her face. “I do not mind,” she tells him.

Jodariel strides back to the blackwagon and shucks off raiment, careful of her horns. Clad in leggings and undershirt, she begins putting away the props of the Rite. She hefts the Nightwings’ sigil from the earth as though it weighs nothing.

“But you saved yourselves,” the Reader continues. Hedwyn looks at her searchingly and shakes his head.

“I do not think so,” he replies, and then turns to help Jodariel, mask under his arm.

“Tatters, look,” Rukey calls, and she does. The stars are brightening again, and their song thrums in her chest like a moth. “Where to next?”

A tattered old moth she is, the Book clutched to her as she looks up and up, as if the sky could reach and enfold her in its own raiment.

**Author's Note:**

> It seemed logical to me that the other triumvirates would have their own Readers, even if they are not mentioned.


End file.
